My touchID doesn't recognise me

Over the weekend, I did so much sanding that I have shredded my thumb to pieces. And as a result, my TouchID doesn’t recognise my thumb print. 

My phone doesn’t recognise me, just as I don’t recognise myself. 

Well, that’s not strictly true. I recognise myself but in the aftermath of the overdose and in the depths of depression I have to wonder: who am I? 

I have no Sense of who I am, and while my CBT work aims to delve into my sense of self and my core beliefs, I am left lacking. 

It’s a lack I’ve felt nearly all my life. A hole I’ve never succeeded in filling.

And I have tried to fill it. With work, with exercise, food, or with volunteering. With alcohol, travelling and self harm. 

But it prevails, and prevents me from really knowing myself. Who am I, without the depression? 

My thumb will heal. Will I heal? As I put my life back together - go back to work, start exercising again, start sleeping better - will these initial building blocks fit into place until I step back and think “yes, that’s me.” 

Will I be able to accept what I see? When I recognise myself again, how do I move forward and get to the next step: acceptance?

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day and I implore you all to do one thing to take care of your mental health. Take a break at lunch away from your job. Walk in a park. Walk around the block. Watch a funny movie or tv show. Eat dinner with someone. Talk to people. 

Look in the mirror, even if you don’t recognise the person looking back at you and say out loud “I am enough.” 

When I finally get to know who I am, I will realise I am enough. But I don’t need to recognise myself to start telling myself that. 

Reasons to Stay Alive

It took me nearly a week to say I attempted suicide, and I did it almost matter of factly.

Everything else had been “I was just so tired”, “I didn’t want to be a burden anymore” or simply “I took an overdose.” 

I had “nothing left to give”. Everything that had been bubbling for days, weeks, months, a year even, finally culminated in an overdose. 

In Antarctica, one night, I drank too much, wrote a suicide note on my phone and came to my senses crawling to the railings in a mess of tears. I dismissed this apparent suicide attempt in my mind, played it down, as alcohol induced silliness. I lost maybe 90 minutes of time between happily socialising with people and being found by crew. 

But the overwhelming feeling of isolation that spurred that event pushed me over the edge on the 17th. 

In the months before travelling I had spiralled, even to a point of being unable to leave the house because of my anxiety. The only place I was safe (from what?) was my house. More than that, the only place I was really safe was my bed, in my bedroom, unconscious in the lull of sleep. 

That week I had tried to leave the house, walked around the block shaking, and the flood of relief as I walked back into my house was palpable. 

I wanted to die back then, a year ago. 

No I didn’t, that’s not right. 

I didn’t want to live.

But I made myself a promise: I could kill myself after I went travelling. 

The idea that I would soon be away and everything would be alright got me through to February.

Then as the months and the countries wore on, the idea that I would soon be home and everything would be alright got me through. 

Then I got home. I started a new job. I settled back in.

Everything was not alright. 

Days became harder to get through. I have a To Do list app and I would set “get through the day” as a task. 

I would randomly burst into tears on the walk to the office, but where I could I shut off my emotions because they were too hard to handle.

I stopped sleeping properly.

I started off excusing it as “I was used to harder beds in Asia”. 

But I woke up exhausted day after day from waking up during the night and being kept awake thinking about work, volunteering, how I hadn’t exercised or been to the gym or what I’d eaten that was bad. What was going on with me and things that were going on in the world. 

The night before I took the overdose I woke up at 3am panicking about an email scheduled to go out at 8am. Could I log on and check it? Would it be okay? Would there be complaints and would I be fired? It took time to counsel my brain that the link I was stressing about worked, the email was fine, and I wouldn’t be fired. 

I slept badly that following Sunday night, and woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all. I worked from home but truth be told I was in such a daze. At one point, on the behest of my nan, I went outside. I sat on the bench and I rocked back and forth, as though this frenetic movement would enable the Vitamin D and the fresh air to seep into and around my body faster, healing me quicker. It’s incredible the connections your brain can make when it’s so far gone that logic isn’t logic to an outsider. But the inside perspective makes total sense of it all. It’s only revisiting that day a week later that I determined that bizarre logic. It’s only with hindsight that the moments of intervention, of prevention, are clear. 

At the time, they weren’t clear at all. 

I had nothing left to give. I had no energy left. I wailed in the car home from a meeting, as if I could purge myself with floods of tears. 

That didn’t work.

I went to my bedroom and self harmed. I removed scissors from my room a long time ago but I had discovered the night before that my bikini razor could do enough damage if I tried hard enough.

The sting of my flesh and the faint pinpricks of blood did nothing to provide relief or ease my pain.

So I gave in to the desperate desire to be unconscious and I popped pill after pill of my prescription medication and some paracetamol. I didn’t count. I didn’t care. 

Weeks earlier, under assessment from the NHS IAPT team I’d created a safety plan that involved removing most of my prescription medication from my home to my Nan's house. I can’t imagine the damage I have done to my organs, or the finality of my actions if I had more medication to hand. 

This is the thing I need people to know: I did everything I should have done except talk. I had the numbers of mental health helplines in my phone. I had a safety plan of things I needed to do if I felt bad. I have so many tools as my disposal, but I felt entirely incapable of exercising them because I felt so lost. The momentary, temporary fix of talking to someone, anyone, couldn’t erase this despair. 

But it would have given me a chance to step back from the edge. 

Instead I jumped, metaphorically speaking. 

There are moments of the night I remember with utter dismay: I kept insisting I didn’t need to be in hospital. I wanted to discharge myself. I couldn’t walk unaided to the toilet I was so unstable on my feet.

There are also moments of humour: the drugs trip I went on gave me a disco floor of flashing colours, and the senility tests given to older people in triage (“what hospital are you at?” “I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look at it.”) 

Then the fear: the mark on the floor that was wiggling like a worm towards me, feeling something crawling on my arm that wasn’t there. 

Then there was the painful aftermath. 

The next day, finally discharged, having to explain myself to my boss and family and friends. 

Having to leave the house again and take my nan for her blood tests to the very same hospital I’d been in days earlier. 

I wrote a note that I don’t remember writing. I wrote that I didn’t want to die, I just couldn’t live anymore. 

That feeling has been with me for most of my life, on and off in waves. I’ve never felt whole, never felt comfortable. Always as if I’m not quite right, it’s me that doesn’t fit. Because it couldn’t possibly be the world that’s wrong, when so many people seem to be okay. 

It’s always been me causing the problems. I had a good upbringing, a family that loved me. I’m privileged, lucky. I can only point to a handful of things that have caused my belief system that I am not good enough, that I am worthless, that I am a burden. 

But depression doesn’t care what happened or didn’t happen to you. It feeds off the negative thoughts and bolsters them. It’s a cycle that’s so difficult to break.

Someone once remarked that maybe I like being miserable. I don’t. I want to be better. 

Whatever happens next, I am recovering. Piece by piece I am trying to find myself again so that I am not so lost. Day after day, I am trying to find reasons to stay alive. 

Every stupid reason I've had for wanting to die or kill myself

I'm not good enough

At sport

At running

At the gym

At love

At relationships 

At friendships

At family 

At work 

At life 

I bought new clothes

I didn't have new clothes

I have too much stuff 

I ate too much food

I threw up food

I tried to starve myself 

I drank too much 

Someone I knew died

Someone I didn't know died

Someone I knew got sick

Someone I didn't know got sick 

A natural disaster happened

An unnatural human rights disaster happened

I don't have enough friends on Facebook

or followers on Twitter 

or followers on Instagram 

I don't have enough friends in life

I'm not a very good friend

I forgot to text back

I forgot to reply to that email

I was supposed to do that task and I didn't

I can't read all the books

Or listen to all the music

Or watch all the films

In the world

I can't grow my hair 

I can't grow my nails

When I grow my nails they break

I always have damaged cuticles

My boobs aren't even

My boobs aren't big enough

My hips are wide

My thighs are fat

I'm fat

My feet are wide but small and I can't find heels that fit

I don't suit [insert item of clothing]

I can't do winged eyeliner 

My makeup usually runs 

I'm short 

I can't see over crowds

People can't see me in a crowd 

People push in front of me in a queue 

I always have a headache 

I keep getting sick 

I take too much medication and I'm taking up NHS money and time 

I don't want marriage

I don't want kids 

There is and was context to everyone single one of these thoughts, ranging from "they don't deserve that to happen to them it should have happened to me" to "I will never be good enough so I should just end it". But the common theme is that my depression and anxiety plays havoc with my reasoning and will use anything it can get its hands on to fuck with me. 

It always comes down to being a burden. Being a waste of space. Believing with my whole head and a heavy heart that the world would be better off without me. 

It comes down to being selfish in a whole other way. I read this list back and I am struck by how self-centred it all sounds. But we can only view the world as ourselves, so our default settings are self-centric.

September was, and is annually, Suicide Prevention Month. Back in August, Sam (my now ex-boyfriend) knew something was up one night and he called me. He asked me what was wrong and I vaguely told him but I didn't want to go into it. I had already made up my mind that I was going to overdose when I got home. I didn't want to burden him with my unimportant problems. 

So he talked to me about Game of Thrones. He made me laugh. We debated certain references and theories.

And he brought me back to life.

I didn't overdose in August. And now, at the end of September, I have made it through another month. Sometimes with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues, you have to take it one month, one week, one day or even one hour at a time.

That hour might be awful. It might be horrific. 

But the next hour might not be so bad.

If you need help to get through that hour, call someone. or text. or email. or write it all down if that helps. Listen to a music track you love. Maybe read a poem or a chapter of your favourite book. There are so many reasons to be alive. 

You might find that you don't want to die anymore. 

Cold Turkey

This is not a blog about Christmas leftovers.
About sandwiches with cranberry sauce.
Or about dead poultry.

This is a blog about withdrawal.

I have been off my anti depressants for 7 days. 
I was on them for 18 months and in less than 18 minutes I had made the decision to stop them. Dead.

It is not advisable to come off anti depressants suddenly, to go cold turkey with them.

I am learning why.

I itch.
My legs, at 1am.
My shoulders and armpits at 3am
My palms, at 5am.
My feet, right now. My head, all the damn time.

I am dizzy. I could look down at the ground and then up at the sky and lose my balance.
I am light-headed. I feel like my legs are jelly and I am going to topple over at any minute.
I put this down to the lack of food. Because I can count the number of full meals I have had in the last 10 days on two hands. Most of them were this past weekend. 

I can count the days I haven't thrown up this month on one hand.

I cannot sleep. I did not understand why I am so, so tired all the time and yet now I get into bed at night and sleep does not come. And when it comes, it does not stay. When it comes the dreams are just...weird.

I did not expect to itch, to not sleep or have even weirder dreams than usual when I do sleep (seriously: Ice cream. Crow people. Packing. Crime. My weird dreams just got weirder).

I did not research or ask about withdrawal before I stopped my Citalopram. Google says all of the above are expected withdrawal symptoms.
That the half-life of Citalopram is 36 hours, so the speed of it took me by surprise but if I'd done some research it wouldn't have surprised me at all. 

I am an itching, dizzy insomniac. All within a week.
And I am crying. This is the only symptom I expected. Naively, I thought that the only side effect of coming off anti depressants would be the depression making a comeback. Because that's what they're for, keeping the depression (or the worst of it) at bay.
I expected the suicidal thoughts, the tears.
I cry at adverts, at the news. I cried about the snap general election. I cried at Guardians of the Galaxy last night.
I'm crying now!
I am a crier; I sobbed down the phone to Oxfam once. But this is kind of ridiculous.

Except One Directioners, who cries at Harry Styles music?! Me, the wet-faced dizzy insomniac who can't stop scratching, that's who.

I should also expect headaches (got that down, 11 years in the making), anxiety (wait, why was I on this drug again? oh yes...) and nausea. Wait, nausea? You mean, the very thing I'm trying to eliminate by coming off the Citalopram?

I am desperate to stop throwing up. I am desperate to be well again, to stop feeling nauseous, to stop getting stomach pains. And that is why I have gone cold turkey from my Citalopram because if it is the cause behind my mysterious sickness, then I will work to find other ways of managing my depression. Another anti depressant, CBT, Mindfulness; the list of possibilities is endless. 

There is also the possibility that it is not the Citalopram causing my sickness.
But by the time my body has worked that out, I will probably be withdrawn from it anyway. 

NOW I'M CRYING AT GREEN DAY!

Confessions

In last night's Doctor Who, the Doctor escaped from a prison. His escape, by punching against a wall (4x stronger than diamond) for literally millions of years, is an almost perfect metaphor for how to climb out of the pit of depression.

It take millions of punches, painful and sometimes traumatic punches, to get yourself out. There is no quick fix, not even pills. I am not fixed from being on more of a plateau. The plateau, the numbness, allows me to access a smidgen more of the person I should be, the person I normally am. But sometimes, that connection fails. 

Sometimes, you have to step outside and cry because your mask of happiness and competence is at risk of crumbling. You phone your mum because you're having vivid and violent imaginations of falling from rooftops. 

Your legs feel like lead. And then they feel like jelly.

And your heart turns to stone. Then it disintegrates like ash. 

All the while your mind just spins.

It makes everything possible and uncertain at the same time. 

It makes recovery possible and uncertain at the same time.

It makes life amazing and soul-destroying at the same time.

It makes you want to live, and makes you want to die, at the same time.

It makes no sense. It makes it impossible to go forward, and impossible to go back.

It works very hard to eradicate your future.

It works very hard to eradicate the very essence of who you are.

The only thing you can do, in the face of something that painfully makes no sense working very hard to destroy you, is to painfully work very hard to destroy it back. 

But this is not a war. You cannot destroy depression with hate.

You can only destroy it with love. 

The Oxford Half

Have you ever felt a bit sad, maybe for no real reason? Felt a bit miserable, a bit "down"? 

Have you ever woken up and realised that you've been feeling "down" all week. Or for a few weeks. Or even for a few months.

When you suffer from depression, you don't realise that you're ill. Not initially. You just think that this is the state of affairs. Even once you've twigged you're mentally unwell, that doesn't make it stop. The clouds don't part, the sun doesn't beam in. 

But realising you're not well is the first step to recovery. Recovery won't be as easy as taking tablets or having a chat about it, recovery for depression is life-long. That's not to say that once you've had it you will always have it, but that once youve been there it's easy to find your way back. 

But in that way, it's also easier to stop returning. You won't always be able to stop, but once you've got yourself out you can do it again, and again, and again if you have to. 

Recovery might feel like you're running from that feeling, and that you'll always be running. But the run turns into a jog and then slows to a walk, as you walk through life as normal. 
But when you're running from those feelings there are people that can run with you. There is support out there. 

My sister and I are running to help Samaritans provide that support. So that when they receive a phone call they can run with you, for a few minutes or hours. They are there to help slow you down and turn you around from the face of oblivion. I know because they've done it for me, more times than I can count. They might have done it for you too, or someone you know. 

So please sponsor us, because we're running 13.1miles so that no person with depression or anyone with thoughts of ending their life has to go through it alone. That if they need someone to talk to, to run with them away from those feelings, that Samaritans are there on the other end of the phone. Just like they were for us. 

Morning After Pills

How do you begin to reconcile the fact that, when you went to sleep last night, you were hoping you'd never wake up?
Or that when you did wake up, this nightmare would be over.

But what reason could ever be strong enough to want to not wake up?
Does there have to only be one? Or can several, smallish reasons add up over time?

Why does it become so hard to imagine waking up and being happy about that? Being pleased that you have one more day, as opposed to wishing yesterday had been your last?

Why has your brain made taking too many pills sound like a normal solution to what you're feeling? 
Why, when you know logically, that it makes no sense to want to die, you only want to curl up and give in. Give up. 
Be gone.

How do you go forth into the world and have a "good day", when you didn't even want this day in the first place?

How many secrets can you keep?

This week, new stats came out about the rate of suicides in the UK. The difference between north and south, and the difference between men and women. It looks pretty bleak.

So between these statistics, and having spent the week reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and battled grief, mild depression and anxiety for the last 4 months, I felt I needed to write this blog that's been brewing.

Until now, all my mental health issues have been a past tense conversation topic. I call for there to be less stigma, more open discussion about mental health. For us to open dialogues so that those with mental health issues can talk about it with their families, friends and colleagues. So that bosses know how to help make the work environment more positive and accepting of mental health issues. So that friends don't take it personally when someone doesn't want to hang out, or doesn't even feel like leaving their house. So that families don't feel like they've let any one down or brought them up wrong. 

But now I'm in the beginnings of what feels like a long journey back to positive mental health, I feel all those things.I feel like I need to be stronger. That this is western privilege, that there are people out there with nothing and here I am with so much and I can't appreciate it. Or that I should be stronger and deal with this by myself. That I'm being melodramatic when I try to imagine the future and all I see is darkness. That I'm being stupid when I cry for no reason, or get panicked and anxious over anything. That I'm pathetic for finding solace in unhealthy coping mechanisms. That I'm letting people down.

You learn all over again to keep things hidden. To keep things secret. Or at least try to.Finding out someone has mental health issues, that they've had them in the past, can make you treat them differently. I know this because I've done it. Knowing I could not cope with a man's mental health issues because I needed to deal with my own, made me end whatever I had with him. But I also spend more time making sure I listen to my sister and ensure I am there if she needs me to be. (At least I hope I do Claire?) These acts don't counteract each other, my actions with my sister do not make ok the way I treated this guy. It's just a personal observation. I've been dumped for being suicidal, and treated with utter kindness and empathy. The latter attitude is the path that people should take, and should be taught to recognise. It's still taboo to be mentally unwell, and it shouldn't be when 1 in 4 of us suffer from mental health problems. Or in the case of my family, 3 of the 4 of us, although you could count my father's alcohol addiction as a mental health problem. So 4 out of 4 of us.

Being able to talk about having mental health problems can lift a weight so great you didn't realise how much it was hurting you to carry it until it comes off. It might not get rid of the weight entirely, but a problem shared is a problem halved, and having someone listen to you, for however short or long a time, professionally or personally, can only be a good thing. If we are scared to reveal we're struggling, we internalise that fear, and turn it on ourselves, it colours our world view. The world becomes a scary, unforgiving, unempathetic place. It becomes filled with people that we are jealous of, things we are paranoid about. Situations we can't deal with. Emotions that overwhelm us.

If you think this post is over sharing, I want you to think about why you feel that way. Are we so caught up in being polite, putting on a brave front, being so British, that we can't cope when people share their negative feelings? We don't know where to look, what to say. We squirm uncomfortably. I know, I've been there, I've done it, I've been lost for words and wondered why can't they deal with this themselves. Despite the fact I've been through this all before, despite knowing that talking about this can and will help, despite the fact that briefly talking about it to a friend online today made me feel tons better, I'm still unwilling to admit this failure publicly. Because it feels like a failure. I'm failing at coping. Coping with life, stress, work, family, all of it. I AM FAILING. Failing damn miserably.

But it is because I am so, so unwilling for you all to know, that I'm writing and publishing this post. It's self-indulgent, yes, but I need that. I need to indulge and wallow in this pain inside my brain because I'm trying to make sense of and work through it, and I know I'm not the only one. I might feel utterly alone but I know I am not alone. Out of 8 of us on the street, there's at least one other person who understands.

This Wednesday night I'm going to a networking event. When I went to the one in January, I was just round the corner and I froze with fear. I just started crying and the anxiety swept over me like a tsunami and I just drowned in it. It took a phone call with my nana to sort me out. It took several deep breaths and a glass of wine too. This Wednesday, dressed in long sleeves, I will go there a little less fearful and anxious because I know I can do it as I've done it once before.

But is that enough to get through all of this, this time? I've done it before. I can only keep trying.

"No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds."

I know I am not alone in simply thinking "What? No!" to the news that Robin Williams has killed himself this morning. A comedy great, a man whose biggest films are loved by those who grew up with him, and those that came later too.

What I hope can be taken from Williams' passing is a strengthened resolve to tackle mental health issues. Every year 1 in 4 people in the UK suffer from a mental health problem. Suicide is the main cause of death in men under the age of 35, although women are more likely to be treated for a mental health issue than men. Perhaps because our society still has no room for supposed "weak" men. And what is weaker than your mind falling apart?

Well that's wrong, and we need to change the perception of people with mental health issues. I have a history of depression in my family: in fact I think everyone on my mother's side of the family up to my grandparents has had depression. My sister and I have both attempted suicide by overdose. And yet mental health is still not treated in an equal way to physical health in the NHS, despite the Coalition Government's promise to do so; NHS England this year announced cuts in funding to mental health services. Mental health problems continue as a silent issue, one that affects so many of us: people we love, people we work with, or even ourselves.

Robin Williams' isn't the first acting great we've lost this year: Philip Seymour Hoffman died from a drugs overdose earlier this year. Addiction can be considered a type of mental health problem, and it has been in the news lately with Nick Clegg promising to abolish prison sentences for people caught for possession of drugs for personal use, because they are "people who need treatment". The Lib Dem's have a point, of course, that personal drug use should be approached as a "health" issue and not one of law & order. But if there aren't the resources available to help people get off the drugs that control (and are possibly ruining) their lives, then what difference does it make?

I am going to watch Hook, and remember Robin Williams' for the comic genius and Oscar-winning actor that he was. Not the broken and desperate man the depression inevitably made him at the end. And there is no substitute for Robin Williams.

Robin Williams: Career in Pictures (Only Oscar)